June will do anything to cover up a dark secret she discovers after the crash, one that threatens to upend her picture-perfect life, even if it means driving the Snow family out of town. But she has never gone up against a force as fierce as the young Mercy Snow. Mercy is determined to protect her rebellious brother, whom the town blames for the accident, despite his innocence. And she has a secret of her own. When an old skeleton is discovered not far from the crash, it beckons Mercy to solve a mystery buried deep within the town's past.
Tiffany Baker’s Recipe For A Writing Life
A handful of islands: Belvedere, Aquidneck, Balboa, Manhattan, Corsica, Maui, the UK
Three small children: Two girls and a boy, plump in the cheeks and knees. Strong-willed but sweet when kissed.
One husband
Indecent amounts of chocolate and coffee
A view of a grassy ridge and an old gum tree
Start with the islands. Move from one to another up through your twenties. Add a graduate degree in creative writing from UC Irvine and then a PhD in Victorian literature for extra flavor, plus a smattering of tragic relationships. Move to New York to teach humanities, drink expensive cocktails, and give up on men.
Go hiking on Corsica with your mother. Meet your future husband. Move to England to be with him.
Add the first child to the mix and marinate. Return to the US, to the town where you began. Wonder what you’re doing home again. Gradually, fold in one, additional child until life is thick and hard to stir.
Decide to write a novel. Get pregnant again in the meantime, but refuse to give up writing. Finish the novel and get rejected. Repeat as necessary until the mixture becomes glue-like and unappetizing.
Finally, find the world’s most perfect agent who performs a miracle and sells your novel to the world’s best editor. Revise the novel many times, until it congeals. Do a victory dance.
Begin Book 2, having forgotten how hard writing a book is. Eat obsessive amounts of chocolate and decide what you’re doing isn’t half-bad. Gain an undisclosed amount of weight and take up jogging.
Every day, take a long walk on the grassy ridge. Stop at the gum tree, breathing deeply. Stare across the hill at your house where your children and husband are. Hope your cypress tree isn’t really dying. Hope for enough rain in the coming season. Hope for world peace. Finally, really, really hope people enjoy your book. Hope they like the second one even more.
Bon Vivant!
AN INTERVIEW WITH TIFFANY!!
We are so happy to be able to bring this interview with Tiffany Baker to you today. Tiffany is one of my favorite authors, and I'm so delighted to get to know her better. Here's the interview:
1)
Tell us something about yourself,
please. How do most people describe you?
The person I am in my day-to-day life is
different than my writing self, and I always find it startling when those two
worlds collide. In “real” life, I’m messy, laissez-faire about too many things,
a short-tempered driver, wildly affectionate with my children, and a little
snarky. My writing self is more composed, somewhat melancholy, and very introverted.
I always find it challenging when someone I know from one context—a neighbor,
for instance—tells me he or she is reading my book. It’s a little like standing
in front of people in your underwear.
2)
Briefly, from where did the idea for your
novel germinate?
Mercy Snow is based on the Antigone myth,
believe it or not, which is the story of a young girl whose brother has died in
battle against Thebes going up against the corrupt king so she can bury her
sibling. It’s a story about individual power versus the state, about private
moral authority versus social convention. I transposed the story to a dying
mill town on the Androscoggin river—a one-company town which doesn’t welcome
outsiders, and which can’t survive the changes happening to it. In one version
of the Antigone story, the king’s wife weaves throughout the play, and so I
took that element and used it to create June’s sewing circle. It was
interesting for me to realize that the core conflict of such an ancient story
can still hold absolutely true, even when the setting and characters morph into
modern times.
3)
Who first told you you could write well, and
how did it affect you?
I suppose it must have been a teacher. I
had so many wonderful grade school teachers—in particular my sixth-grade
teacher, who was so kind and patient. I used to come home from school, and type
stories on my electric typewriter, lost in my own world for hours. Then, in
high school, I was lucky enough to be allowed to do a year-long independent
study in creative writing. That teacher introduced me to contemporary poetry,
and challenged me to raise the intellectual bar. The most important thing all of these people
did for me was to expose me to other writers, and to get me to see that writing
is a continuum, a conversation I could join if I wanted.
4)
Which contemporary authors do you most
admire?
There is this whole pack of contemporary
women writers who are just killing it lately. People like Rachel Kushner, Ann
Patchett, Curtis Sittenfeld, Zadie Smith, Elizabeth Gilbert, Donna Tartt,
Hannah Kent, Claire Messud, Karen Russell. It’s very inspiring. There’s so much
to read.
5)
Who are your favorite classical authors?
I love Emily Dickinson, and the Bronte
sisters. I also really love Greek myths and the stories from the Old Testament
because they are pure story—large in scale and character. And, finally, I’ve
never outgrown fairy tales. I used to read Russian ones when I was little, and
still love the real Grimm tales, the ones full of gore, and scary witches, and
transformations. They are brutal and
magical at once.
6)
What was your first book as a child? What’s your all time favorite book?
When I was tiny, I remember being obsessed
with Go Dog, Go. Then, when I had children, I fell in love with it all over
again—the zany drawings, the ridiculous hats the girl dog wears, the simple
humor. It’s a fantastic kids’ book. But my all-time favorite book is Jane Eyre,
which I read when I was nine years old and touring around England with my
parents. Mr. Rochester still makes me weak in the knees, and is there any
better sentence than, “Reader, I married him?” No, there is not.
7)
Read any good books in the past 6 months?
I loved A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
by Anthony Marra, and Burial Rites by Hannah Kent. Such beautiful and
interesting writing and such haunting stories that bring distant worlds close.
8)
What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?
I spent a summer scooping ice cream once. I
developed a weird muscle bulge on my forearm and an aversion to sticky children
and anything frozen. Oh, and I worked in a plastics factory on a kibbutz in
Israel. I loved the kibbutz, but working in the factory made me grateful that I
was going to go to college so I could lead a life of the mind.
9)
What’s your earliest memory?
When I was very small, I lived in West
Berlin with my parents. I can remember walking along and running my hand
against the wall, which had graffiti on it. It’s odd to me in a wonderful way
that the city of that memory is gone.
10)
What’s your most treasured possession?
I’m very attached to some of the furniture
I have, which I grew up with, and which has moved around with me. Wherever I go
those pieces—creaky wooden chairs, lopsided armoires, Turkish rugs—make it feel
like home. I’m also rather fond of my
wedding band—plain gold with an inscription I love—and my husband’s oar from
Cambridge, which is hanging on the dining room wall.
11)
Are you working on a new novel?
Yup. It’s something I’ve been thinking about
for years, and is a little different than the other things I’ve done, so I’m
taking my time with it. The more books I write, the more I’m realizing that you
save yourself a lot of headaches if you take your time with a first draft. I’m
very excited about my new project, and right now it’s a luxury to have it all
to myself. In the meantime, I hope
everyone enjoys Mercy Snow. Thank you!
How awesome to get to know something about you and your writing, Tiffany. We have a lot in common...authors we love and treasured possessions, just to name a few. I loved "Burial Rites," too. Wish we were neighbors!
THE BOOKISH DAME REVIEWS :
I feel I've been on a very fortunate trip having just finished "Mercy Snow." It's one of those books that puts the heart back into reading. I felt such a loss of reading material that excited me over the holidays...and since that time, "Burial Rites" and "Mercy Snow" have both resurrected my belief in good books and fantastic authors. Tiffany Baker, in particular, is a gifted writer whose work is just captivating. I fell in love with her as an author when she wrote "The Gilly Salt Sisters," but I have to say that this book really rivals that one!
This is a haunting and gorgeously written book. There is much to be said about the workings of the characters. Their psychology leaves their outward appearance secondary as we become absorbed in their thought processes and machinations. As June, the mill owner's wife, spins her web catching herself up in it as well as the townswomen, we are reminded of how easy it is to fall in our own folly. We become desperate and hungry with Mercy and Hannah. And, we look with frustration at a situation that is both hateful and unfair from the goldfish bowl of the Gods...far above the action of the novel.
This is a magical and meaningful book. Mystical and mythological bits and pieces dot the storyline reminding us that all that we see in the world may not be all there is to it. It's a story that draws you in and keeps the pages turning. There's more than one moral to this story.
The mystery at the center of the novel keeps dancing at the edges of every chapter, leaving us grasping at it like a willow-the-wisp. While we are given a good deal of the actual mystery at the onset, the deeper ones are withheld from us, and we know it! This gives depth and richness to the storyline.
I loved this book. It was one of those I wished would never end. I could happily have gone on reading about these characters...
This is one of those books you just have to read this winter. It's a show-stopper of a novel. I highly recommend it!
5 stars Deborah/TheBookishDame
